Who is Harsh Vardhan?

Associated with RSS since his student days, Vardhan studied in Old Delhi's Daryaganj and then went on to study medicine in Kanpur

Delhi BJP leader Harsh Vardhan after he was declared BJP’S chief ministerial candidate for the Delhi Assembly polls, at the party office in New Delhi on Wednesday

Harsh Vardhan, 58, was formally announced on Wednesday as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s chief ministerial candidate in the coming election to the Legislative Assembly in Delhi. An MLA since the Assembly came into existence in 1993, winning all four times, he has a thriving ENT (ear, nose, and throat) practice.

Associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since his student days, Vardhan studied in Old Delhi’s Daryaganj and then went on to study medicine in Kanpur. He was elected in 1993 from East Delhi’s Krishna Nagar constituency and has retained his seat since, despite his party being unable to win a majority in the next three elections.

Though less visible than the two Vijays of the Delhi BJP, Vijay Goel and Vijay Kumar Malhotra, his supporters used his clean image and his being a professional to lobby for Vardhan as a better candidate against the Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejrival and Congress’ Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. What worked against him in the calculation, though this was overcome,  was that the BJP has lost twice — 2003 and 2008 — when he was the city party president.

Referred to by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as “Swasthya Vardhan”, he was health minister in the BJP’s government in Delhi between 1993 and 1998. In that job, he’d launched various polio immunisation drives and in 2001, was awarded the Polio Eradication Champion Award, also given to former US President Bill Clinton and former United Nations’ Secretary General Kofi Annan.